Your neighbor's 14-month-old toddler says things like "cup!" when he means that he would like a cup of milk. Your neighbor thinks that his toddler is very lazy. What is happening? The toddler is .

Making use of Holophrase

Explanation:

As a child develops, the child learns to speak by making sound and other speech development follows after this stage. A child or toddler makes use of a single word to communicate the idea. In an actual sense, an adult can use one or two sentences to communicate such ideas, but the child does this with one word.

A perfect case of holophrases is the constant use of "cup" to communicate "I want a cup of milk". In this scenario, the toddler uses the term cup to express a complete idea of having a cup of milk.

The toddler is not lazy, rather the toddler is using holophrases.